Episode Recap

It’s the middle of the night at Sun Restaurant, and virgin ghost Soon Ae (Kim Seul Gi) is trapped in the body of Bong Sun (Park Bo Young) and battling it out with an evil spirit. Both she and the evil spirit are shocked when Soon Ae knocks some bowls over and makes a racket loud enough to alert her boss, chef Sun Woo (Jo Jung Seok) upstairs in his tiny apartment.

Sun Woo thinks back to shaman, Suhbingo’s claim that he’s surrounded by ghosts, but shakily denies that ghosts exist. Instead, he grabs a flashlight and goes downstairs, as Soon Ae crouches down to hide. Soon Ae almost gets away with it, but inadvertently reveals herself at the last minute.

Soon Ae explains her situation to Sun Woo, and asks to stay the night, but he isn’t having it. When she tries to convince him with aegyo (cuteness), he tosses her out entirely. Stuck with nowhere to go, Soon Ae picks a direction at random, but unsurprisingly, ends up outside her father’s restaurant. She bemoans his excessive drinking, but doesn’t go inside. Instead, Soon Ae ends up at a jjimjilbang, or public sauna.

At first, Soon Ae spends her time failing at harassing a random hot guy, but when she hears a commotion, she goes over to find a possessed woman stuffing her face with sauna eggs. Soon Ae motions at her, and the ghost leaves her host behind to follow Soon Ae.

In one of the sauna rooms, Soon Ae chats with the ghost, who turns out to be the same one that yelled at her for possessing people in the first episode. When Soon Ae points out the irony, the other ghost confesses that she was hungry, since the ghost population is on the rise, and ancestral rites are on the wane. Soon Ae confesses her own dilemma, that she’s trapped in Bong Sun’s body while the time ticks down to the three-year deadline for a ghost becoming an evil spirit. Soon Ae needs to find a man of vitality (who can withstand sex with a ghost) in order to lose her virginity and move on. As she speaks to her ghost friend, the other patrons of the jjimjilbang gather round to stare at the sight of Soon Ae apparently talking to herself.

The next morning, Soon Ae runs into unrelentingly cheerful cop, Sung Jae (Im Ju Hwan) on her way back to the restaurant. He’s just coming off his shift and craving ramyun, so they end up eating at a convenience store, since his wife, Sun Woo’s sister, Eun Hee (Shin Hye Sun) doesn’t like him eating it at home. Unable to contain her curiosity, Soon Ae throws a million questions at Sung Jae about his relationship with Eun Hee. He answers cheerfully, but Soon Ae is unsatisfied; instead, she consoles herself with the thought that he must be happy, but laments how considerate he is of her, since it makes it hard to get over him.

Back at the restaurant, the wheelchair-bound Eun Hee plays some music, and imagines herself dancing ballet. Her reverie is interrupted by the arrival of Soon Ae, who, out of nowhere, peevishly tells Eun Hee that ramyun is also food. In the kitchen, sous chef, Min Soo (Kang Ki Young) is hung over from last night’s party. He feels even worse when Soon Ae goes along with his drunken request of the night before and starts calling him, “Oppa”. When Sun Woo comes into the kitchen, he pointedly ignores the resentful Soon Ae, and berates Min Soo for overindulging. When Sun Woo goes to check in with Eun Hee, he finds her looking longingly at pictures of her friend’s baby. Their conversation is interrupted by a phone call from his friend, PD, So Hyeong (Park Jung Ah), who requests that he and Soon Ae come back to the studio to do some reshoots for their TV program.

On the way to the studio, Soon Ae tries every tack to convince Sun Woo to let her sleep in the restaurant, but he won’t budge. It’s a stark contrast to his overly concerned behaviour with So Hyeong at the studio, worrying over her paper cut, and then chasing away a senior colleague who engages in cheerful sexual harassment. When the senior colleague drops his car keys on the couch on his way out, Sun Woo surreptitiously scoops them up, under the watchful eye of Soon Ae.

After the shoot, So Hyeong’s senior colleague comes in search of his missing keys, but Sun Woo plays it cool while So Hyeong’s colleague panics. So Hyeong invites Sun Woo and Soon Ae to have chicken and beer for lunch, and sends them on ahead so she can take a side trip to her office. Left alone with Sun Woo, Soon Ae goes on the offensive, first pointing out that he likes So Hyeong, then confronting him with her knowledge of his theft of the keys. She swipes the keys from a protesting Sun Woo, then uses them to threaten him surreptitiously when So Hyeong arrives. Sun Woo drags her away from the table, but finally gives in and lets her sleep in the restaurant in exchange for her silence.

Back at the restaurant, Soon Ae can’t stop pestering Sun Woo to confess his feelings for So Hyeong. Sun Woo is as unresponsive as ever, and tells her to back off before going to his upstairs apartment. He comes back down to find her playing loud music while making fried rice. He goes back upstairs, but she follows him with a tray of the fried rice, and refuses to take it back down. When she leaves, Sun Woo wonders what happened to the normally shy and apologetic Bong Sun. He takes the rice upstairs and uses it to feed his stray Corgi.

The next morning, Sun Woo wakes Soon Ae from a nightmare about drowning. She gets up just before the other chefs to come into the restaurant. Even though Dong Cheol (Choi Min Cheol) immediately recognizes that she hasn’t been home, none of them suspect where Soon Ae actually slept, and they go straight to work when Sun Woo chases them off.

The chefs are horsing around in the kitchen when Seo Joon (Kwak Si Yang) points out that they’re out of leeks, an integral part of the daily special. Min Soo advises that they switch to scallions, but Sun Woo immediately figures out that Min Soo has forgotten to buy leeks, and sends Soon Ae to the market to get some.

At the market, Soon Ae runs into her father, Myeong Ho (Lee Dae Yeon). She’s a little sulky over his earlier rejection of her help, but helps him with his shopping regardless. When they go back to his restaurant, Myeong Ho compares her ability to hold a grudge to his daughter (awwwwww). Soon Ae, meanwhile, is worried about his drinking, and makes him promise to only drink with her. On her way back to Sun Restaurant, she runs into her brother, Kyung Mo (Lee Hak Joo), who warns her to stay away again, believing that she’s after his father for his money. When Soon Ae berates him for being a disrespectful layabout and leaves, Kyung Mo suddenly switches gears and assumes that she’s after Kyung Mo himself.

Back at the restaurant, Min Soo chases an ailing Sun Woo out of the kitchen to go get some rest. Sun Woo reluctantly agrees since he has a cold, and goes upstairs to bed. He rouses just long enough to take a call from So Hyeong about a change in the shooting schedule. When she hears his voice, she offers to come by with rice porridge, but immediately retracts the offer since she’s too busy. Sun Woo passes out right after they hang up.

Later that night, Sun Woo is feverish when Soon Ae comes by with porridge, and imagines that it’s So Hyeong who is taking care of him. In his half-asleep state, he kisses Soon Ae, who after a brief resistance, kisses him back. She doesn’t have long to enjoy the sensation, when the stray Corgi’s barking wakes Sun Woo up all the way. Sun Woo jumps out of the bed when he realizes what he’s done, then unceremoniously tosses Soon Ae out of the apartment. She doesn’t get far before she realizes that kissing her hasn’t given Sun Woo hypothermia. Realizing that Sun Woo must be the mysterious man of vitality who can withstand intimacy with a ghost, she chases him back into the apartment. He shoves her out again, but her joy is undimmed; she goes all the way back to the jjimjilbang to confirm then celebrate the good news with her friend, the ghost.

The next day, Sun Woo is so improved that he’s back at work. But, when he tries to act like a reasonable adult and apologize to Soon Ae for kissing her, she refuses to let it drop. She chases him into his apartment while he’s changing and tackles him on to the bed. Sun Woo looks terrified at her bizarre behaviour, but Soon Ae is too desperate to notice; she point blank asks him to do her the favour of having sex. He finally gets her off him and returns to the restaurant, but Soon Ae is not to be put off. She continuously chases him around the restaurant, begging him to do it just once, much to the confusion of the other chefs.

Sun Woo proves resistant to all of her strategies, then when she sneaks into his bed, he finally gives up and leaves the restaurant. He ends up at the house of his mother, Hye Young (Shin Eun Kyung), who can barely stop mothering him long enough to let him sleep. When she finally does, she is so concerned at his out of character behaviour that she calls up shaman, Suhbingo, who suggests an ancestral rite to rid Sun Woo of ghosts. Hye Young agrees, then tells Eun Hee to come along with her.

The next day, Soon Ae’s campaign to harass Sun Woo into sleeping with her is interrupted by chefs, Dong Cheol and Ji Woong (Oh Eui Shik). They point out that she’s caught a cold, and when Soon Ae complains that a guy gave her a cold without even doing it with her, they both assume that she’s talking about something other than sex, and wonder what kind of jerk would give her a cold and not help her out.

Meanwhile, when Soon Ae goes to the break room to clean up, she finds Seo Joon changing into his uniform. On the assumption that she was chasing Sun Woo for an advance, Seo Joon offers to lend her money if she needs it. Soon Ae is so touched that she reconsiders going back to chasing him instead.

Meanwhile, at the apartment of Suhbingo, Eun Hee and Hye Young hand over Sung Jae’s horoscope in order to see why Eun Hee is not getting pregnant. Suhbingo has no words of comfort for them, as she points out that Sung Jae has terrible luck with family and should always be alone. When Hye Young asks if Eun Hee will ever get pregnant, Suhbingo tells Eun Hee to eat more rice, then changes the subject.

Meanwhile, Sung Jae and his partner end up on a call, chasing barking dogs. Sung Jae is as cheerful as ever when they finish up, but later, someone we can’t see beats the dogs into silence.

Back at the restaurant, Soon Ae makes a last-ditch effort to get into Sun Woo’s apartment, but he catches her and chases her off. When he demands an explanation, Soon Ae is unable to tell him the truth, and he walks away with a warning to her to cut it out. He goes up to his apartment, where he gets a text from So Hyeong asking him to call her. He tries to unplug his phone from the charger so he can call, but it won’t budge.

Meanwhile, downstairs, a feverish Soon Ae lies down on the bench seats. Soon Ae and Bong Sun keep separating and reuniting, as Sun Woo keeps tugging at the charger’s cord. Finally, Sun Woo unplugs the phone as Soon Ae falls off the bench. Soon Ae stands up, only to find Bong Sun still lying on the ground, feverish.

Just as Soon Ae realizes that she’s out of Bong Sun’s body, Sun Woo comes downstairs out of concern for the sick Bong Sun. Soon Ae watches as he finds her on the ground and frantically tries to wake her up.

Comments

Junggugeo Kaenada 중국어 캐나다: I watched a little of “You’re the Best, Lee Soon Shin”, and Jo Jung Seok did not make any impression on me. Yet, in “Oh My Ghost”, he has been hilariously appealing. Plus, he is taking his shirt off a lot. That might have been the reason episode 4 was your favourite, thus far.

Only: Well, he’s not the only reason; Soon Ae’s relentless campaign to get Sun Woo to sleep with her was pretty entertaining. But, it sounds like episode 4 was not your favourite. How come?

Junggugeo Kaenada: Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed it. However, I thought it focused too much on Soon Ae’s sexual harassment of Sun Woo. Previous episodes managed to have a better balance of different storylines.

Only: I was enjoying Soon Ae’s bizarre seduction campaign too much to complain, but I’ll agree that she was pretty relentless. I did enjoy scenes where Soon Ae wasn’t present, or where she was at least quiet. For example, in the scene where So Hyeong’s senior colleague was harassing her, I enjoyed watching Sun Woo’s expression in the background. I also enjoyed watching the chef crew horse around.

Junggugeo Kaenada: At least, the episode ended with rapid progress. I am a little sad at the prospect of the super entertaining Soon Ae being relegated to the margins. Now that she is back to being visible to only a select few, the sad and subdued Bong Sun will return to center stage. Though, now that Soon Ae has separated from Bong Sun, we will get the interaction between the two women that we had hoped.

Only: Which is miles better than the idea of Soon Ae having a romance with Sun Woo in Bong Sun’s body, only to disappear at the end, or something equally stupid. But, I think given what we’ve established of everyone’s personalities so far, and the likelihood that Bong Sun will remember nothing of what went on, the next few episodes are shaping up to be pretty interesting.

I’m also curious about the mystery around the overly smiley Sung Jae. Do you think he’s possessed by an evil spirit?

Junggugeo Kaenada: I did not know what to make of Suhbingo’s reading that Sung Jae is destined to be alone. After Sung Jae makes a police call on a junkyard then leaves unmolested by the guard dog, you hear what sounds like the dog being beaten. That was a disturbing and bewildering outcome.

Only: I wondered about that, because as Sung Jae and his partner are leaving, the dog won’t stop barking. I thought maybe it was a dog’s reaction to ghosts, since Sun Woo’s corgi won’t stop barking at Soon Ae. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but Suhbingo’s pronouncement that Sung Jae was alone, and at a distance made me think that he might be possessed.

Junggugeo Kaenada: Your idea sounds more plausible than the hypothesis that Sung Jae is Soon Ae’s murderer, which is the kind of sloppy sensationalism that the writers of “Let’s Eat” would have come up with. I expect more consistency in tone from the writers of “Oh My Ghost”.

Only: Same here. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with. Especially if it involves Jo Jung Seok looking harried with his shirt off.

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4 Comments

Loving both the show and the recaps! My pet theory of the moment is that Sung Jae somehow inadvertently caused Soon Ae’s death and thus was weakened by guilt and remorse enough to allow possession…. Or something along those lines. In flashbacks he seemed like he had a bit more edge to him than he does now. Huge fan of both leads, they are so good in this! Enjoying this immensely, thanks for the recaps!

Ha! I like your theory, since it’s close to mine, and I like being right. I’m also loving these two leads. I’ve never seen Jo Jung Seok in anything else, so I may have to catch up on some drama-watching after this.